with which to shock the girls at the club. Mary, my sister, or Mariah, as she called herself then, immediately put a heavy make on him, which he deflected amusingly, thus winning my heart even more than it was already won?the only human male on the planet besides my stepbrother who preferred me to her. Mariah, although lovely as the dawn, is a couple of steps slow in the flashing wit department. Witt would say absolutely outrageous things to her in my presence that would go right past her, that wouldn’t even dent the famous smile. You have to give her game, though. She never stopped trying, even after she outdid her big sister by announcing she was pregnant. Something I was not, and not likely to be, given my husband’s attitude. She got married in Saint Pat’s.
My brother was there that time, too. And now I’m reminded, reading along, that Josey never much cared for Witt, nothing he ever said, but there was a stiffness there. I thought it was because my dad liked him, and so Josey had to not like him. Witt never said anything about it. Few entries for that summer, actually. I guess I was happy. Fortunate are those whose annals are brief. I remember him waving from his window when we took the boat out. He never came with us. He got seasick on a floating dock. I thought he was happy, too, a member of our family at least. He had a knack of fitting in, although if you believed his writing you would have thought here’s a guy who would never fit in anywhere. Maybe that was his invisible part, adapting the local coloration. He pronounced Sionnet SIGH-nit, instead of sigh-ON-et, like the tourists, and Montauk with the accent on the second syllable, like an old Long Islander, and exhibited the proper contempt for the south shore.
Was the real Witt lurking beneath the surface then? Was the camouflage that of a leopard lying in wait? There’s nothing here to suggest it in these pages, not the slightest suspicion. As it turned out, that was the last summer we were all together. After it ended, Witt and I went on our trip.
Suddenly I don’t want to read anymore. I’d rather not read the Africa stuff just now. I put the thing into a cupboard and go out on the landing. The sky is low and wet and there is lightning to the west over the Glades. I am thinking about our first night in Africa, when we got to Lagos, and how fast it all collapsed. A week and the whole thing was gone, or so it now seems, all the flowers and singing and the making me happy, all eaten up. No, not a leopard inside. A certain weakness, a hollow place in Witt, that his nice parents couldn’t reach and, as it turned out, I couldn’t either. But something did, in Africa.
TWENTY
10/24 Lagos
Can’t believe this happened, even as I write it down words seem unreal, as if writing down in a dream journal something that didn’t really happen. Seem compelled to, tho, habit of keeping a record of everything that happens, discipline of fieldwork. This actually happened, I was there.
Evening of the fifth, the day I got back from the field, W. came in late, pounded on my door, yelling, should have told him to get lost, but polite me, ashamed, not wanting to wake the whole house. W. a mess, stank of beer, smoke amp; something stinky sweet, like cheap deodorizer. Talking grandiose, not like him at all: he was imbibing the true spirit of Guinee, African night, the music, alive as never before,
Thinking now, why didn’t I break his fucking neck? Can’t recall, only how exhausted I was, so startled that I just lay there and let him.?? Exhausted by love, ground down, sorrow, never understood this before, you hear about it, obviously common in male-dominant cultures, like here, recall thinking o fuck it all, he wants to rape me, fine, I’ve tried everything else. And I had thought he was coming around. After which he left, without 1 word, like I was a whore. Funny, I was totally silent during, but after wailed like a crazy woman, didn’t care who heard me.
Everyone had, clearly, because the next morning the group treated me extra nice, like I was terminally ill with loathsome disease. W. gone too. Unbearable, so scrammed out, got Tunji to take me to the U.
Worked on Gelede until I saw Mr. O. and his staff were hanging around waiting to close the place down, but were embarrassed to interrupt the great scholar at her work, or maybe they’d heard about the night before like everyone else in this fucking city of dreadful night. Snuck back to my room, locked myself in and worked some more, loading reading notes into laptop, crying in spurts, drinking rum on top of Xanax, and passed out.
Crashing sounds, singing, loud music woke me up. Total darkness, generator off. Got dressed, followed the sound of music to the hotel bar.
There were ten or so people there, all drunk, two of them women, tight bright dresses amp; lacquered hairstyles: ashawos, low-end Lagos whores. The boys were gboyegas, street boys, kind that hung around Lagos Island and Victoria, ripping off tourists and people just in from the bush. Tricked out like American gangstas, baggies, faked designer labels, big sneakers, the backward ball caps. The girls were late teens, the men ranged from that to midthirties. When I came in they were milling around uneasily; Lary’s was not their sort of place, bar was approximation of a British pub?dark paneling, cozy nooks, a dartboard, etc., not a plank on a couple of crates under a kerosene lamp. One had a boom box, some hip-hop shit at top volume. The stranger living in W.’s body approached me and grabbed me and exhibited me to his pals like a trophy. My white bitch. She loves black cock, don’t you? A lot more, too, about me and Dave Berne, how I was screwing the white man, and how we knew how to take care of a bitch like that. The men were nervous, excited, a fear there, too, but dulled by booze. They came closer, I was touched, mauled. They were speaking, joking, in dialect too fast for me to follow. Tap current tap current, slang for feeling up a girl, yes, he was staging the lynch mob’s fantasy, the niggers and the white woman.
I hit him, with my fist, in the nose. Someone grabbed me from behind, pawing at my shorts. I grabbed his wrist. Uki-waza, the floating techniques. Mae-otoshi, the front drop. You’re supposed to let go of the guy’s wrist when he floats away from you, but I didn’t, and he bellowed when it snapped.
Hard to recall this next part. I was in a circle of them, eyes and teeth, W. on the floor, blood gushing from his nose, stain on his white shirt. Shouting at me, all of them, waving fists amp; someone hit me on the head with a bottle, heard the crash, felt the beer run down my back, then Boom, deafening noise, ringing in ears. Screams. And the stink of gunpowder. A woman’s outraged voice. Mrs. B. The sound of more screams, the flop of sandals, the stomp of shoes, a door slamming. Des was there, holding me, asking if I was all right, me bleeding all over him. No, as a matter of fact.
The boom was Mrs. Bassey’s shotgun. She was leaning over me, too, propped on the smoking weapon. Everyone was there, gaping, amazed.
Mrs. Bassey sewed up my head gash. A nurse, too, in her early years, it turned out. You are well rid of that one, my girl, she kept saying, sewing away. Yes, but I wanted him back. Not that creature. I wanted my husband.
I woke up late when the dope wore off and descended to the library. Everyone was very polite, and kind. Dave Berne asked me if I wanted to go to Esale-Eko, which is a district of Lagos where the Gelede tradition is strong, he had a contact there, Akinkuoto, a babalase, meaning priest
I escaped into Africa-time then, for twelve days, during which I didn’t write in my journal, or anywhere else, just wandered with a camcorder, talking with anyone who would talk with me.
One interview with Olaiya, the iyalase, the shrine mother. She had heard about me and told Akinkuoto to bring me by.
She was sitting on cushions in a dim low-ceilinged room, and at first all I could see of her was her clothing, a large headcloth folded in a wide roll across the top of her head and a billow of white robe, with a fold thrown over one shoulder, toga-style. Closer, I could feel the ashe pour from her face like a fountain. “Aristocratic” doesn’t begin to describe her face. Someone like that looks into your eyes, you feel the shock in your chest and belly, like a blow. I thought of Puniekka in Chenka and was afraid, amp; I bowed spontaneously, like you do crossing the altar in church. Akinkuoto made the introductions, which were elaborate. I could feel his tension, and he was probably easier with her than any man in the community. He treated her like a carload of nitroglycerine, but she didn’t look at him, only at me. We did the ritual greetings, also lengthy, as always in Yorubaland. When in the course of these she asked
